On Feb 15, 2012, at 5:04 PM, John Sessoms wrote: > I wonder if it would be possible to build an earthquake resistant structure > while retaining the appearance of the old cathedral?
Depends on the earthquake and the level of resistance. The building codes have different levels of earthquake resistance which depends on the use of the building. Most home/office buildings only need to allow the safe exit of occupants and it doesn't matter whether it needs to be demolished afterwards. Critical buildings such as hospitals need to remain safe and fully operational afterwards. I think there are four levels in our codes. The codes do make assumptions about the nature of the potential quakes in the region and ours significantly exceeded the model due to its proximity. It's only the short duration of ours that prevented an order of magnitude more casualties. If they started with seismic base isolation they'd be a long way ahead. The technology was invented in this country but it's barely been used here - in our city we have one base-isolated building. They say it doesn't add much (if any) cost so I'm hoping they mandate it for our rebuild. In a seminar we went to last year they described how it was used even for houses in L'Aquila that were built after their earthquake. The other suggestion I'd have is to use a flexible material instead of stone but then you'd change the appearance... Some have suggested leaving part of it as a memorial ruin. I'm in two minds about that... Cheers, Dave -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
